


To Watch the Moon Disappear

by sockablock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Written pre-Nott backstory reveal!!, allusions to torture, angst and a hint of fluff, backstory fic, nott meets yeza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 12:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockablock/pseuds/sockablock
Summary: Maybe it’s the tentative way Nott creeps forwards, or maybe her hunched and disarming posture, or maybe the concern glowing brightly in her wide, golden eyes, but the halfling man only stares blankly as she approaches.Then she carefully offers him a bit of water, and he is so shocked that he speaks.She has no idea what the sounds mean. Her grasp on Common is rudimentary at best. Most goblins only need a handful of words and phrases—yes, no, surrender, die, give, weak, where is your food, let me go, don’t kill me, you will die, I will kill you, I will really kill you—with a few swear words thrown in for color.This phrase is not one of them.He says, “Thank you.”(or: a study in Nott, and how she leaves the clan)





	To Watch the Moon Disappear

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i love Nott so much

Eventually they call her Nott, and they give her to the torturer. 

It isn’t actually _as_ terrible as she initially fears—at least she isn’t the one nailed to the wooden boards and she isn’t the one shivering in the cold and she isn’t the one begging, pleading, sobbing for death before the real work’s even begun—but she _is_ the one gingerly plucking jagged glass, rusted daggers, shards of stone from the evil clay bowl in the corner and handing them over to be scraped or sliced or plunged into skin and eyes and bones.

For a goblin whose original sin is mercy, this does not sit well. 

She spends the first night wide-eyed, blank-minded, staring at a stone wall and rocking slowly. She can’t remember if she slept at all. She wouldn’t have wanted to, even if she could, for fear of dreaming.

Later on, against all expectations, she grows used to her work. Or, at least, she grows numb to it. And over the course of the next year, as she attends to her duties, every once in a while she’ll manage to slip a bit of extra water to the prisoners, or sneak a scrap of fabric in for warmth, or even make the end come quicker, for those already too far gone to save. She hopes that it helps.

And then one day there’s a new captive. A halfling man from the nearby Felderwin village. Nott does not sit in on his…introduction to goblin society, as the torturer says that he is too important, and there can be no distractions. Nott is grateful, and spends the day wandering aimlessly through the caves, avoiding the others and keeping to herself.

But that night, as she makes her usual evening rounds scraping away messes and checking the locked doors, she peers past a particular set of rusted iron bars and sees, huddled in the corner of his makeshift prison, the new halfling man, shivering and staring back at her with a silent, vacant expression. And maybe it’s the tentative way she creeps forwards, or maybe her hunched and disarming posture, or maybe the concern glowing brightly in her wide, golden eyes, but he only stares blankly as she approaches and only flinches slightly when she stops.

Then she carefully offers him a bit of water, and he is so shocked that he speaks.

She has no idea what the sounds mean. Her grasp on Common is rudimentary at best. Most goblins only need a handful of words and phrases— _yes, no, surrender, die, give, weak, where is your food, let me go, don’t kill me, you will die, I will kill you, I will really kill you_ —with a few swear words thrown in for color. 

This phrase is not one of them. 

He says, “ _Thank you_.”

His tone is the strangest thing she has ever heard. He speaks without malice, without hate, and with only a faint hint of fear.

Unaware of the irony, she whispers back, in Goblin, with a shrug. “You’re welcome?”

And then she leaves, taking the cup with her, so that none of the others suspect a thing.

\-------------------------------------------------

A week goes by. Every day, she comes back with water, or extra food, or a kind face, for the halfling man in their prison. Every day, he says the same sounds back to her. Every day, she slips away as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible.

Years of creeping around their caves, trying not to be noticed, has made Nott sneaky. Very, very sneaky. 

But, apparently, not sneaky enough, because she is seen by a younger goblin, who immediately passes this on to his friends, and his friends tell their friends, and their friends tell others, until the story warps and twists and whispers that Nott—Nott the Useless, Nott the Weak, Nott the Clumsy, Nott the Worthless—has gotten their new prisoner to speak when even the torturer herself could not.

Nott is summoned by the clan elders. She is given a task.

\-------------------------------------------------

She pushes her way into the small prison, like she always does. Except this time, guilt weighs deeply in her stomach and she can barely meet his eyes.

She places a cup of water onto the floor for him to take, like she always does. Except this time, she lingers, and watches him reach for it.

He says, again, “ _Thank you_ ,” like he always does. Except this time, this time—

“ _Thank you_?” Nott tries. The unfamiliar syllables stick to the roof of her mouth. 

His eyes immediately light up. “ _You speak Common_?” he asks. 

Nott catches “you,” and catches “Common.”

“ _Yes_?” she hazards. 

He seems to breathe a long sigh of relief, and launches into a rapid stream of sounds and words that only get faster and faster as he continues to speak. She takes a step back, the words all blur together and she can only catch snatches— _village, attack, others, why here_ —until the bewildered expression plastered across her face finally breaks through his hope.

He sighs again, and this time it isn’t quite as nice to hear. Panicking slightly, unsure of what else to do, she points a finger to her chest and says, “Nott.”

He blinks. And then nods, and points to himself. “Yeza,” he says. 

That is her first lesson.

\-------------------------------------------------

Another week passes.

“Those are clouds,” says Yeza, in Common, as he points to the drawing in the dirt. “They live in the sky.”

“In the sky?” Nott echoes. “Like birds?”

After finally managing to teach each other enough of their language to properly communicate, they are experimenting today with new concepts. Nott has rapidly begun to realize that though she has been aboveground before, mostly during her first failed attempts with midnight scouting and raiding parties, there are many things she has never seen before. Apparently clouds are one of them.

“No, no, not birds. They aren’t really _alive_. They’re…they’re just sort of things that float in the sky. When you look at the moon, sometimes it goes away, right? That’s because of clouds.”

She processes this information, and understands. “Oh, you mean, er, _gra’cahz_ ,” she says. “No, no, not alive. They’re grey, and make it easier to sneak, yes? They hide the light at night?”

Yeza considers this for a moment. “Sure,” he agrees. “ _Gra’chaz_.”

Nott chuckles. This is a new thing as well, this chuckling sound. She has never had any need for it before, but Yeza is very amusing when he tries to pronounce Goblin words. 

“What are those things you said yesterday, those things for being in the water?” she asks.

“Boats?”

“Yes, boats. How do they work, again? Why doesn’t the water go into them?”

Yeza picks up the twig, and puts it against the ground again. “They’re empty in the middle,” he says. “So that air goes inside and makes them light, and…”

\-------------------------------------------------

Yeza stops whistling, and gives Nott a faint smile. “I expect you’ve never heard anything like that before, eh?”

Nott looks confused. “No, no, of course I have,” she says, and this seems to surprise him.

“What, really?” he asks. “In Felderwin, or from travelers, or where?”

She frowns. “Here,” she says. “I heard it here.”

“ _Here_?” he blinks. “Goblins have _music_?”

“ _Music_ , is that what you call it? Not-words from your mouth that sound pretty?”

“Er, yes. Sure. You have that?”

“Of course we have music,” she says, trying the new phrase. “Why wouldn’t we? There are, hmm… _talook_ , that you hit with your hand and they make a sound, and we have these long sticks with holes in them, they make sound too, and I can do what you just did,” she adds, and whistles a few sharp notes.

Yeza is astounded. He is quiet for a moment, and then the faint smile returns.

“You keep surprising me, Nott.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Is that a good thing?”

He nods emphatically. “Absolutely.”

\-------------------------------------------------

Their days pass with relative ease, Nott always slipping into his cell every morning to learn as much as she can about him, and about his language. She peppers the man with endless questions, and he always answers them, until one day there’s a pause in the conversation and he frowns.

“Nott?” he asks.

“Yes?”

“Why…why am I not being tortured?”

Nott does not need to ask what this word means. It is one she already knows. 

She is quiet for a moment. She looks up at Yeza’s furrowed brow, takes in the dirt smudged across his face and the now-tattered state of his clothes. The scars and welts across his skin from before Nott had befriended him. 

She can’t tell him the truth.

She looks down at the ground, and sighs. 

“They’ve given up on you,” she says. “We capture a lot of people, and they know you won’t talk, so they’re focusing now on other things. I…I’m not technically supposed to be here all the time, but I’m small. And easy to miss. So they ignore me.”

Yeza takes a moment to digest this. Then he nods slowly, and looks up at her with eyes full of genuine, warm gratitude.

“Thank you,” he says. “For not letting me be forgotten.”

She feels wretched.

\-------------------------------------------------

“You have learned _nothing_?” one of the elders snaps. She is wizened, a wrinkled old husk of a woman. Her eyes narrow down at Nott. “Nothing valuable at all?”

“We have seen them interact,” says another, voice dripping with accusation. “They are _friends_ now. She will not give us anything worthwhile.”

“We knew she was useless,” sneers another. “Let’s just kill them both and be done with it.”

“No,” says a voice, and Nott realizes it is her own. Her eyes go wide with panic, and she clears her throat and her words break but she forges ahead.

“No, no, I _will_ ,” she tries. “I just needed to earn his…earn his trust, and learn his language. I will provide information. I swear it. Give me three more days.”

They all exchange looks.

“Three days,” says the first elder. “Information, or you both die.”

\-------------------------------------------------

Nott spends the night thinking of what she can do. Eventually, lying in her pile of rags, she finds the solution and nods to herself.

She is doing this to protect him, she reminds herself. She is doing this to save him.

\-------------------------------------------------

“Are halfling clans the same as goblin clans? Do you all live together in the same place?”

Yeza, sitting on the stone floor with Nott in front of him, considers this question for some time. “Sort of?” he settles on eventually. This is a phrase he uses a lot. Nott knows it to mean: _you are right but also very wrong, all at the same time._

“Halflings don’t really live in clans,” he continues. “We live in villages, a big group of halflings made up of little groups of halflings. Our families.”

“Families?” Nott echoes, and Yeza looks stricken. 

“Do you not have families, here? No mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters?”

Nott shrugs. “We are all brothers and sisters,” she says. “We don’t really have mothers and fathers, not the way you do.”

“I…I see,” says Yeza. “That makes me rather sad for you, I admit.”

She gives him a small smile of reassurance. “It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t need them. I have you now, don’t I?”

He chuckles, and grins at that. “Of course, Nott. Of course.”

“Say,” she says, leaning forwards, “can you tell me about your…your village? What is it like? Are there lots of people there? Where is it? Does everybody know each other?”

Her bright curiosity reminds him of a young child’s. His grin turns fond, and he reaches over to ruffle her hair.

“We’re a pretty close community, I’d say, especially since there’s a lot of folk—”

\-------------------------------------------------

“—who live in family units, mostly in the southeast portion of the city,” Nott reports, arms clasped behind her back and face pointed up at the raised rock formation where the elders sat. “The north is where their farms are, and where all their food is stored and where the livestock lives, and the west is where they have these…these sort of trading areas where they have a lot of other goods like clothes and the like. The big gates that surround the city have a few entrances, but they’re all heavily guarded, so getting in is hard. They have sentries of their own too, called ‘Crownsguard,’ that patrol the area.”

There is silence for a moment. 

And then one of the elders leans forward.

“ _Good_ work, Nott.”

\-------------------------------------------------

He answers her questions excitedly, without reservation, without suspicion, and in the moment Nott finds herself forgetting her true purpose and losing herself in the colorful descriptions of halfling culture, in the vibrant life of the busy village streets, in the strange and fascinating celebrations they hold and the intricate workings of their society.

She is entranced.

And halflings, she learns, are more similar to goblins than she thought. Not only do they also have music, but they also have their own language—called Halfling—and their own aging rites, and their own gods, and, as she learns one day, like goblins, each individuals have their own jobs.

“What do you do, Yeza?” she asks.

He puffs his chest up slightly, and his posture is a sharp contrast to the filthy, grimy, tattered state of his appearance. 

“I’m a chemist,” he says.

“A chemist? What does that mean?”

He stops to consider this for a moment. “I mix things up, liquids and powders and the like, and they do different things.”

“So…you’re like a healer or a priest or something?” Nott tries.

“…sort of,” he says with a chuckle. “But I do can do _much_ more with chemistry.”

\-------------------------------------------------

“I just need access to those ingredients, the healer may have them, and then I can use his knowledge to help the clan! I can create remedies, or poisons, or even acids for our weapons. We can use this.”

“Fine, yes, alright. You may learn this from him.”

\-------------------------------------------------

“You really are a natural at this, Nott,” beams Yeza as they watch the green liquid in the small stone pot bubble and pop. “You sure you’ve never had any training before?”

She glows under his praise. “I just have a great teacher.”

\-------------------------------------------------

Two months have passed. Today, they are sitting together in the cell, backs against the wall, looking at the other wall.

“You said before that goblins don’t have families?”

Nott nods. “The clan is our family,” she says.”

“So, then…do goblins fall in love? I know that’s a silly question to ask,” he adds hastily, “and you’re still young, but I was just curious.”

Nott seems to consider this for a moment. “You said before that love is when you care about something a lot, right?”

He nods. 

“I…I don’t know. Maybe? I think…I think they can.”

He leans his head against the stone behind him. 

“I had someone I loved, very much, back home,” he says.

Nott feels her heart sink.

“Oh,” she says. “What…what were they like?”

Yeza closes his eyes. “He was wonderful. His hair looked like autumn leaves and eyes were like sunlight.”

The cadence of his words gives Nott the impression that this was something Yeza said often, and softly, and with a smile on his lips. Her heart sinks further.

“I’m…I’m sorry I can’t get you out,” Nott says. “They…the clan would kill us before we could get to the entrance. Believe me, I’ve thought about it a lot.”

He ruffles her hair. 

“That’s alright, Nott,” he says. “I’m just glad you’re here, and that you bothered to think of that.”

\-------------------------------------------------

And then, the next day, Nott shows off a poisoned crossbow bolt to the elders, and demonstrates a flaming, handheld projectile. She speaks to them in Halfling, and she tells them that Felderwin is emptier in the winter.

They are impressed.

So impressed, in fact, that they decide they no longer need Yeza.

\-------------------------------------------------

Nott scrambles into his cell, eyes wide, heart racing, fists clenched and shaking with distress. He looks up at her and gives her that faint smile, the one she had grown so used to, but then he notices her fear, her terror, and he pauses.

“Nott?” he asks. “What…what’s wrong?”

She stops short a foot in front of him, and shakes her head.

“We have to get you out of here,” she says. “We have to free you. You have to get out.”

He frowns. “Why? What’s happened?”

“They…they…” 

She takes a deep breath. And then another. And then the tears start falling, and she falls to her knees.

“I’m sorry, Yeza,” she sobs, “I’m so, so sorry.”

He moves closer, puts a hand on her shoulder, and the care in his gesture and the tenderness he shows makes Nott only cry harder. She is terrible. She is disgusting. She does not deserve his kindness.

“I…I’m sorry, Yeza. I betrayed you. I’ve betrayed you. You were so important to me, you were so nice to me, and I broke your trust and I’m sorry.”

He frowns, but does not move. “What do you mean, Nott?” he asks softly. “What did you do? What is going on?”

She takes a few moments to steady herself. Her breathing is ragged and between gulps of air she tells him the truth.

“They never gave up on you, that was a lie,” she moans. “They saw that you spoke to me, at the very beginning, and they wanted _me_ to get information from you. So I started talking to you, and I was just going to try to do what they wanted, but then you were so _kind_ to me, you treated me like a real _person_ , and I didn’t want to hurt you, so I liked. But, Yeza, these last two months have been the best of my entire life. And they, the elders, they didn’t like that we were so friendly to each other, and they wanted to kill us both and, and _I_ was okay with dying but not if _you_ would too, and as long as you kept giving me information they didn’t care, and they let us keep spending time with one another that way, so I played along but now…now…”

Yeza’s tone is unreadable. “…now?”

“Now they say they have everything they need. They want…they want…” her voice is barely a breath, “…they want me to kill you.”

There is a moment of silence. And then Yeza speaks.

“Are…are you going to kill me?”

Nott shakes her head. Fat, heavy tears hit the floor. “No,” she says, “no. I…I can’t do that. You’re a good person, I…I…I’m so sorry for lying to you.”

Yeza moves away, and Nott’s heart plummets until she realizes his hand is still on her shoulder. She looks up, and meets his eyes. 

They are warm.

“You know,” he says gently, “I’ve seen quite a bit in my time. But not once, not ever, have I seen a goblin cry.”

He puts a hand on her head and ruffles her hair. “It’s okay. It’s alright. You did what you needed to, and…and I am still glad to have met you.”

Nott buries her face into his chest, and he wraps her into a hug. 

“I’m so, so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” he says gently. “It’s alright. But…er…I still would rather not die, if it’s all the same to you.”

Nott, despite her tears, laughs. She pulls back, and looks at his face.

“I don’t want you to die either,” she says. “You’re my friend. And…and…you still have someone waiting for you. Someone who has hair like the autumn and eyes like sunlight,” she recites. “And I know I said once that it would be almost impossible to get you out, but…but…”

“But now we have no choice.”

“Yeah.”

He nods. “Alright then. Do you have a plan?”

She wipes her eyes, sniffles a bit, reaches into her pockets, and pulls out a ring of keys.

“In one hour, get ready to run.”

He nods again. “Will you come with me?”

“I…if you’ll let me?”

“Of course.”

“Okay then,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Then I’ll try. But if I can’t, then I just want you to get out. I just need to know that you will be safe.”

“But what about y—”

Nott hands him the keys. “I’m a goblin,” she says. “We’re tough little buggers. I’ll be fine.”

He takes her hand in his.

“You are my friend, Nott. You are brave, and I will never forget you.”

She smiles. “Thanks, Yeza. I’ll never forget you too.”

\-------------------------------------------------

Nott has been drunk before.

She has never, in her entire life, been this ridiculously belligerently drunk. 

The alcohol didn’t even taste good, sliding down her throat, it was something awful brewed in the deep tunnels out of fungal growths and night-time plants, but goblins know their drink and the sharp, hard burn does its job well. She is so thoroughly intoxicated, even, that right now, her idea sounds like the greatest plan ever created, and she feels more alive than she ever has before. Alive and invincible. Alive and courageous. Alive, and brave.

She grabs a crossbow from the wall, strides out into one of the larger caverns, climbs up into a small alcove in the wall, sights down the shaft, and fires. 

Later on, she tells the story a little differently.

But right now, as the strong fermented spirits course through her veins, the hard liquor tells her that one isn’t going to work. It isn’t going to cause enough chaos. It isn’t going to give them the distraction they need. It isn’t going to ensure his escape.

She fires again. 

And again.

And again.

And now the chamber below erupts into complete chaos, goblins shriek and scream and scramble around, they shout in their terrible guttural language and accuse each other of shooting and point fingers and then point claws and then spears and short-swords and now the entire clan whips into a maelstrom of writing green flesh and angry swears and flashing talons, and Nott feels good, she feels so good, until someone below points up at her and with a gleeful, vengeful accusatory finger shouts:

“Idiots, the lot of you! It was _her_! Look, up there, it was _her_!”

Nott throws the crossbow.

She runs.

\-------------------------------------------------

She doesn’t even have time to see if Yeza escapes.

\-------------------------------------------------

She finally slows down at the edge of the forest, the infuriated screams of her clanmates long past and the winding tunnels of their underground caverns now just a distant echo in the landscape.

She leans against a boulder, breathing heavily. 

She looks up at the night sky, through a break in the trees, and watches the moon disappear.

" _Gra’chaz_ ," she says softly. "Clouds."

And then she glances at the rolling valleys beyond, and sees a tiny glow on the horizon. She can just make out the vague silhouette of rooftops and chimney stacks.

She will sleep here tonight. And then tomorrow, she will be gone.

\-------------------------------------------------

And later on, much later on, much, _much_ later on, after a botched attempt to steal a bottle of cherry wine, Nott is thrown into a prison like a sack of old bones and the rusted iron gate slams shut behind her. She kicks at the damp, gravelly ground, grumbles to herself, and turns around and there, to her surprise, in the corner of the prison she sees a man, huddled into himself and silent. He is staring at her, piercing blue eyes open wide, shoulders trembling.

She considers him for a long, long minute. There is an old, old ache in her chest. She remembers the sound of someone whistling, and the feeling of a warm hand ruffling her hair. There is a tray on the ground, the untouched evening meal left by the guards for her and this shivering man.

She reaches down.

She picks up a chipped mug, and carefully steps closer, and offers him a bit of water.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! As always, Comments and Kudos keep me going! And if you ever want to talk, or shout at me about critical role, hit me up [@sockablock](https://www.sockablock.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! 
> 
> <33333


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